| The Smolensk Conspiracy |
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Performance by Trzeci Teatr Lecha Raczaka (Lech Raczak’s Third Theatre), as part of 2nd Season of the Masters “The World as a Place of Truth”
Fri 6 November 2015, 19:00 sekretariat@grotowski-institute.art.pl; tel. 71 34 45 320 Please note that all booked tickets must be collected from the Office (Przej¶cie ¯ela¼nicze) no later than one day before the chosen performance.
Pity and fear, tied together in an unbreakable knot, form the core of the experience which, in the early days of theatre, was called catharsis. Smolensk Conspiracy revisits most, if not all, of the conspiracy theories surrounding the crash of the Polish presidential plane in 2010 in Smolensk: the downright barmy, the ostensibly rational, those attempting to discredit the current, democratically elected government of the Polish Third Republic, and those less prevalent but present (mostly online) opinions about the responsibility of the Fourth Republic ideologues. We weave the “legendary” and contradictory scenarios into a single fabric: an assassination orchestrated by Tusk and Putin, fog, artificial fog, a “helium bubble”, fake radio beacons, the pilots’ carelessness, secret service conspiracies, the flight controllers deliberately guiding the plane off the runway, the President’s brother’s insanity, pressure from the commanders, the panzer birch tree, accident, explosion, multiple explosions, “thermobaric bomb”, as well as “legends” about survivors who were slaughtered at the crash site.
Written and directed by Lech Raczak Music Pawe³ Paluch Costumes Ewa Tetlak Performers Halina Chmielarz, Ma³gorzata Walas-Antoniello, Wojciech Siedlecki, Janusz Stolarski, Pawe³ Stachowczyk Premiered on 26 February 2014 Running time 100 minutes
Lech Raczak (1964) is co-founder of the Theatre of the Eighth Day (Teatr Ósmego Dnia) in Poznañ. Originally an actor, he also became a director in 1967, and then Artistic Director in 1968. In 1984, after the Polish Ministry of Culture imposed restrictions on the Theatre of the Eighth Day (defunding, loss of property, performance ban), the group performed irregularly, mostly in churches. In 1986 Raczak emigrated. Over the following few years, with some of the company members and a number of international performers, he toured Europe for a few years. In 1990 the group returned to Poland. No-Man’s Land was the last production created together by the director and the group. After 1993, with the international group Sekta (The Cult), Raczak continued exploring some themes from his previous work (Orbis Tertius). Between 1995 and 1998 he was Artistic Director of the Polish Theatre in Poznañ. From 1998 he worked in Italy. Between 1993 and 2012 he was Artistic Director of the Malta International Theatre Festival in Poznañ, Poland. Lech Raczak has directed about 70 theatre productions, all of which he co-created or wrote. His productions with the Theatre of the Eighth Day have garnered more than 30 awards in Polish and international theatre festivals. He has received solo awards for writing and directing, including the Konrad Swinarski Award, Polityka’s Superpassport, the Prize of the Minister of Arts and Culture, as well as the Gloria Artis Medal for Cultural Merit and the Officer Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta. Raczak gives theatre workshops in Poland and abroad. Since 2003 he has been a lecturer at the University of Arts in Poznañ. In 2013 he established the Orbis Tertius Foundation. With Teatr Trzeci Lecha Raczaka (Lech Raczak’s Third Theatre) he has staged his two original plays, The Smolensk Conspiracy and Oh, How Nobly We Lived, as well as Mistero Buffo based on the play by Dario Fo, and a new interpretation of Adam Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve. He has authored many theoretical and critical texts which have been published in Poland and abroad.
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